When a person of color, especially if they’re black like me, affirms their support for causes such as queer liberation, feminism, animal rights, or socialism, I immediately feel that I can believe, with minimal doubt, that they’re truly convicted and principled in what they’re advocating for.
However, when a white person claims to support leftism, until my skepticism is proven wrong, I immediately assume they’re a dishonest and performative libshit. I then proceed to interact with them with hefty amounts of caution. If my assumptions are proven true, I’m never shocked.
When you grow up white in America, there’s so much that you have to deprogram from your brain before you can even move left. I had some really shitty views as a kid and I know I held to those just because it was coconut tree in which I fell out of. And beyond that, so much of society is geared towards privileging whiteness, you have to actively work to break out of it.
That said, I am grateful for people in my life who have called me out of stuff and have helped me be better. This is a reminder to all the white folks, if you get called out on something… apologize, understand - actually understand - where you went wrong, and be better.
That said, I am grateful for people in my life who have called me out of stuff and have helped me be better. This is a reminder to all the white folks, if you get called out on something… apologize, understand - actually understand - where you went wrong, and be better.
Agreed. I’m much rather feel bad for a day because someone called me out, then make other people feel bad the rest of my life because of my ignorant and hurtful behaviour.
My friend you fucking know why, it’s the same reason why I don’t trust self-proclaimed “progressive/leftist whites” until they prove themselves also, and it’s also the reason why I tend to go out of my way to prove myself early on too. Like, I have touched grass and I have been to predominantly white activist spaces, I have seen white bullshit and I have done white bullshit. I have learned through all practical experience not to trust whites for even a second, especially not those who refers to whites as a “”“we”“” or in any way identify with whiteness, as if “white” is an actual meaningful group identity rather than a fucking Indiana Jones sandbag of a “”“culture”“” whose continued existence is inherently destructive and antithetical to decolonization, anti-imperialism, Black liberation, and socialism.
You do not have to ask “why” you lack an ability to trust whites, you are in fact very wise to do so. It is not something you should feel guilty about, as if you’re being racist by “judging books by their covers”, it is in fact whites who are racist and it is on whites to prove themselves to you.
Because that’s how it keeps going. I have tried time and time again to ignore the little danger signs from White people and kept getting burned by some, even by self-professed leftists. Not by all, of course, but by enough to be wary. It’s unpleasant; this hypervigilance around White people is a real burden and I wish it hadn’t been forcibly inflicted on me, but that’s what living in a White Supremacist society does.
I find it helpful to differentiate between “White” and “white” people.
Capital-W “White” means the person exhibits a lot of the toxic settler-colonial, imperialist, and casually racist behaviors that Amerikkkan society perpetuates.Lower-case w “white” means the person has skin tones that make them look like the Capital W’s but they don’t do that shit. They’re actively antiracist, they’re vigilant and purge any trace of white supremacy from themself, they’re learning, and they support people of color in our fight against white supremacist fascism.
It’s not about skin color, and it’s not even essential to who they are – White people who rehabilitate themselves can become white people, that is, people whose skin is light but aren’t being toxic or shitty in any way.
A pretty basic litmus test I’ve found is checking how they feel about American Imperialism. If I say, “Joe Biden belongs in prison for what he did to Iraq” and they agree, then they probably understand on a visceral level that brown people are people. If they argue, that tells me they don’t actually value our lives – because it is fundamentally impossible to care about nonWhite lives and also be ok with any of these genocidal fucks.
Capital Riot
You absolutely should not trust white people based off of the words they say.
When a person of color, especially if they’re black like me, affirms their support for causes such as queer liberation, feminism, animal rights, or socialism, I immediately feel that I can believe, with minimal doubt, that they’re truly convicted and principled in what they’re advocating for. However, when a white person claims to support leftism, until my skepticism is proven wrong, I immediately assume they’re a dishonest and performative libshit.
It depends, I do not trust any person of any race immediately when it comes to topics like LGBT rights or feminism for example. There are many homophobic and sexist people of all races. There are many performative people of all races. People are people, after all. However, when it does come to issues around race, I agree with you. I think most white people simply do not understand the concept of structural racial discrimination as they have no experience with being on the side that gets discriminated against because of their skin colour and/or ethnic group. Obviously there are exceptions, but as a whole Eurocentric thought, which includes white supremacy, has been dominant throughout the past couple of centuries.
With regards to socialism, I find that in South Africa black people in general tend to have a much better understanding of what socialism is. I would say that is because part of the struggle against apartheid was based on socialism, and people from other racial groups, in general, have been influenced heavily by red scare propaganda or a comparador mindset.
I absolutely agree with that take. I was raised in a devout Catholic, Afro-Caribbean immigrant family who I had to completely cut ties with due to their very staunch opposition to LGBT people literally just existing.
One thing I will say, though, is that within the queer community, black queer people certainly tend to treat me better than white queer people do, and that’s for sure. I’ve noticed that white queer people seem to be more likely to have an exclusionary mindset, in having a higher chance of being one of those “LGB drop the T” people but also being racist towards queer people of color. It’s horrifying how their lack of intersectionality can really lead to this kind of behavior.
I’ve noticed that white queer people seem to be more likely to have an exclusionary mindset … but also being racist towards queer people of color
Unfortunately this definitely exists, many white gays that want nothing to do with LGBT+ people of other races. I’ve seen it in South Africa. It’s very sad. As the LGBT+ community, we’re already a minority and further division over racist nonsense is just going to make us weaker and easier to oppress.
This is how I feel about French people, unless they’ve explicitly clarified that they’ve read works by anti-colonial writers and have read the history of their evil empire and recognize the current imperialism of it today, they’re a Nazi in my eyes.
Cause you have object permanence?
All I know is when over half of these white “progressives” I met throughout my life in the west openly mock east and southeast asians and at the same time telling us that we are somehow the most racist group while also saying that they love and support the minorities to other non asian minorities, all that trust was immediately gone. Malcolm X’s comment on liberals pretty much confirmed to me with regards to my experiences with them.
East Asians seem to be left out of most “racial Justice” discussions in Western progressive circles. It’s always purely “black and brown” while leaving out various Asian groups that fit neither category.
It’s quite astounding how they pick and choose being progressive as if they’re picking out ice cream flavours instead of doing the normal thing of supporting everyone equally.
Yeah as a white person, don’t believe anything I say. Please judge me and other white “leftists” by our actions. Look at what we actually do and care about, only then can you tell if we’re communists or socialists or anarchists, or if we are just using the words and performing. I know real and fake white leftists - the good ones do lots of great organizing and the bad ones talk a lot and end up derailing plans.
I’m a white communist and I sometimes feel like a vampire who’s trying not to be a vampire. White people in the west have so much to lose (at least in the short term, until the destruction of whiteness) from communism that it’s not unusual at all to distrust us. I don’t trust us either.
2020 is on my mind all the time actually, and I think a lot about how many people were marching at one point, and then how most of us stopped marching. Like…the problems are still there. They’re even worse than they were in 2020. Marching didn’t solve them, marching by itself is not going to solve them, but a lot of people were marching for a left cause (even if a lot of it was fucking lib shit), and then we stopped.
they made a movie where you’re played by wesley snipes and it owns
Idk I try not to view people so suspiciously unless they’ve given me reason to. It’s worked out alright so far.
Lots of normal comments, very conducive to building a mass movement
Keeping wreckers out is super important. To that end a pattern here is being discussed
We’re not talking about keeping wreckers out, we’re at “I don’t trust a white person unless they have a biracial kid, and even then maybe not.” There has never been a sizable leftist movement in the U.S. with that kind of thinking. I don’t see any realistic path to one with that approach, either. I don’t know of any AES state (Cuba is probably the most relevant example to the U.S.) that has addressed racism and discrimination in a similar fashion.
I don’t know how we can read Gerald Horne and have 100 threads about how racial categories were invented to keep poor people at each other’s throats and then just do exactly that. I don’t know how we can nod along to Engles on pre-patriarchical family structures or Graeber on pre-capitalist economies then think whatever we’re doing in this thread is revolutionary.
If White people collectively want trust, they can show and prove that they deserve it. Til then, the very idea that a lasting accord can be found in the plantation empire is honestly kinda laughable to me; and informs my research into valid presentations of Black Nationalism (we don’t do that Black Hebrew or NFAC shit here). There is still a bill 400 years long that hasn’t even started to be paid back yet, and frankly, I’ve lost the faith that it even will be paid back without organized and disciplined formation.
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I would hope people are uncomfortable with being labeled ontologically evil purely on the basis of their skin color; that’s a ridiculous notion that is not remotely leftist.
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How much distance is there between “I wouldn’t trust you in almost any situation” and “you’re a bad person by your very nature”?
ngl i feel very similar about cis men. is this intersectionality?
Honestly wouldn’t exclude trans men from that. I see that kind of verbage that specifically singles out cis men a lot in trans, lesbian and feminist spaces, i’ve talked and thought like that in the past as well and i’ve found that practically all transmascs that i know personally or that i at least regularly interact with online find it extremely othering and belittling when women pretend that trans dudes are somehow the better men, and it is a gender essentialist notion at its core. I mean, they openly call it transphobic, i’m just being diplomatic here.
Yes, transmascs have lived experience with misogyny in almost all cases, they can fall back on that experience while they settle into living in a masculine gender role fulltime, but being the better men everybody believes them to be by default takes work on their part. Many put in that work, but it’s a pain in the ass. It isn’t realistic to believe they will automatically keep in mind what it’s like growing up as somebody who’s viewed as a girl in a patriarchal society. And when i hear from the shit early-transition or poorly passing transmascs have to put up with, how often their masculinity is called into doubt, how hard they have to prove themselves, i absolutely find they do go through the exact kind of shit that produces fragile masculinity, toxic masculinity, or just tacit support of misogynist power structures in cis men. There’s an entire propaganda apparatus out there specifically targetting men that struggle to look like
And unfortunately, there’s transmascs out there that are just awful, shitty people. Trans men are men. Criticizing men should always include them, and they need to do self crit like every other dude.
And unfortunately, there’s transmascs out there that are just awful, shitty people.
Back before I cut off dating white men, I ended up with my heart dicked around by a transmasc the exact same way a cis white man had. Third time’s the no-go, white men as partners got deaded regardless of what’s in their pants. There’s fundamentally no difference between the cognitive of a transmasc and that of a cismasc; especially when it’s under Anglo socialization.
